Good Frozens
by Mental Ninja With Super Powers
Summary: A technological mishap lands Crowley the demon in the North Mountain of Arendelle, where he meets Elsa the Snow Queen. As he befriends her, he also learns secrets about her that compromise his conscience.
1. Chapter 1

There it was.

Oops.

It was sudden, it was spiky, the guests were horrified, that Duke of Weaseltown who had loudly stated he wanted to exploit the kingdom was now even more loudly stating something about sorcery – yes, of _course_ she knew she'd blown it, after all these years and the last twelve hours trying to cover up the itch. Yes, of course she'd done wrong, and literally royally messed things up. But that was not to say she didn't feel at least bodily relief when she released that sheet of ice from her fingers. _It can't be good for you, keeping ice bottled up in your hands so long they turn blue, _she thought.

When she let go – and she shuddered with guilt to think it – she felt _good._

But of course. Of course she had let her parents down. Of course she had once again endangered Anna…

_Oh, Anna._

Her affection for Anna was a strange cross of oh-there-that-silly-thing-goes-again amusement and soul-crushing responsibility for protecting her only sister, friend and family. Anna was young and clueless, optimistic and without secrets. Making sure she stayed that way, and thus sparing her the burden of knowledge by taking it upon herself, had over the years become Elsa's life mission. It had worked, but it had been painful and depressing. In fact, Elsa sometimes secretly blamed her sister, in an oh-that-silly-thing way but not really, for her emotional disarray and caprice. And now, as she heard Anna's trembling voice whisper her name, Elsa felt something new growing in her heart.

It wasn't ice. It was an idea and was much colder.

She deserved her own life. Anna would find out anyway, she could stop babying her, and maybe, just maybe, it was time to be selfish for a change.

She took in the last sight of her sister she expected in a while and burst through the door, to be greeted by an agitatingly large crowd of citizens.

"Long live Queen Elsa!" they cheered.

"Stay away from me," she said. _I will,_ she thought.

She ran.


	2. Chapter 2

"My point IS, it'll be fun. We'll go and mess things up just a bit, and it won't be any different from all the harmless stuff we've ever done."

"Except it's time travel."

Anthony J. Crowley, resident fast-living demon of Earth, shifted his sunglasses dubiously downwards. His vertical pupils widened and he tried to read the angel Aziraphale's expression. It was still a bit vague (and still slightly hard to see because of the nature of his snake pupils), but it didn't look like boredom or passive-aggressive refusal or anything personal, which made Crowley feel a bit better. At least he knew he didn't do anything wrong. It was hard to tell with the angel.

"You know what they say. We shouldn't meddle with time. Time travel never works because people don't handle it properly," Aziraphale replied. "And I agree."

"Oh, come on. Who has ever said that? Certainly not all the rabid fans of Doctor Who. Don't you like Doctor Who?"

"No."

"You don't!? Art thou not a true Brit!? Did you know I pitched it to BBC back in '63?" Crowley wasn't sure, but he thought he could hear apprehension behind the logical front of his friend, which was surprisingly new. After all, they'd been up to no good since the beginning of time, him more than Aziraphale, of course, but the casually righteous book-collector was sometimes along for the ride, thwarting the occasional wile he judged to be extra distasteful, but otherwise serving as quite the partner in crime.

"You what? You – oh, never mind. I'm just being cautious here. We've never done it before. Convince me it's not dangerous," Aziraphale said, plopping down in the white leather chair in Crowley's chic London apartment that he'd finally started living in.

"After the Dud Apocalypse? Aziraphale, being within a kilometer of the Antichrist is the most dangerous thing either of us has ever done. Well, except the whole stunt I did with the burning car."

"Especially after the Dud. Crowley, I thought you called me up to, as the young ones say, hang out," sighed Aziraphale. "Relax. Listen to Tchaikovsky or something. Not this whole time travel nonsense."

"I already hssssaid it's not _actually_ time-travel," Crowley said, a bit conflictedly. To be honest, relaxing didn't sound half bad, but a day's plans to try his new gadget, _together,_ weren't to be taken lightly. He made two cups of tea, put them on the glass table next to the SuperTech From Hell, Reward for Good Demons, and sat down from across the angel.

"Did I miss something? How is going on an adventure, _back in time_, not time travel?"

Crowley sighed. His habit of flicking a finger to make things happen had taken a toll on his explanation skills. "So I got this in the mail today," he began, gesturing to the SuperTech, which was red and black, slightly thick, with a wide display screen. "Beelzebub sent it out to all Satanic employees on Earth. I guess to boost morale after Dud went boom. Check it out." With a flick of a finger, he turned on the screen, which was frozen on a scene of the now-famous Burning Bentley (On The M24). "Basically, it's a congratulatory masturbatory thing that interacts with Supernatural memory somehow to take you physically back to all of your best moments of temptation, destruction and sinstigation, and allow you to relive the glory. But then I hacked it, and now it does even more."

"Call me a digital dummy, but how do you…. _hack_ an unholy device of Hell?" questioned Aziraphale.

"Have you _seen_ Hastur and Ligur? They can't code for shit," laughed Crowley. "And I audited a computer science class at Berkeley. Took the final, set the curve. It was great."

"So what did you do to the – SuperTech? Is that what it's called?"

"I…" A snap of finger, and a drumroll manifested. Crowley grinned cheesily. Tssss! "…made it so that it's not just the best evildoings, but all of my memories. Also I can stay for as long as I like. And it's all real. So it's just like going back in time."

"Except...?" Aziraphale's left hand held his tea, and his right one was poised to anticipate contact with his own face.

Crowley thought for a moment. "Except nothing. It's – oh. Yeah. You're right."

There seemed to be a sizable pause. Time did warp very slightly for supernatural beings in duress, as both of them had learned during the Dud. Then contact was made – not between Aziraphale's right hand and his face, it turned out, but between his hand and the SuperTech From Hell, Reward For Good Demons.

"What the hell are you - "

"I'm taking this," said Aziraphale. "You can't have it."

"I can't ha – I MADE IT!"

"I know you. You're a demon." The angel, now standing, held it behind his back, as holding it up out of reach had proved ineffective due to Crowley's superior height and gangly arms. "Even if it's for personal use _now_, you'll use it to propagate evil eventually. And tampering with time has more serious consequences than traffic circles, TV dinners and children having nightmares about Daleks."

"No it doesn – wait. Ohhoooh, noooo, you're _kidding_ me. Is _that_ the reason?"

"Yes," said Aziraphale exasperatedly, "that's the reason I don't watch Doctor AGH!" He had somehow not noticed Crowley transform into a serpent and wrap himself around his gadget. Shocked, Aziraphale dropped both, reluctantly snapped his fingers, and then Crowley the humanoid was impossibly bent over on the ground.

"I don't like to use my powers, but this device could cause trouble in the wrong hands," Aziraphale said seriously.

"You have no right. What happened to the Arrangement?" hissed Crowley, who was less angry than annoyed that a fun afternoon was being spoiled by an unusually stodgy friend.

That softened the angel up a bit, and he fell silent, sitting down, picking up his lukewarm tea and sipping slowly.

"You're right," he finally said. "Sorry. I forgot about that for a moment. I might have got more righteous than you're used to these days."

"Yeah, I know you. You're an angel," replied Crowley. And he was a demon, and demons didn't apologize. But he did feel bad, if not for getting frustrated then for traumatizing kid Aziraphale. "Hey, how about I let you try it on your own? Your choice of memory. Five minutes. Or I'll snap you back whenever you feel like it. It's like a simulation." He picked up and offered the machine with a stretched arm.

Aziraphale still looked dubious. "Are you sure I won't be trapped in the past?"

"There's a return button right there. And I'm the one wearing sunglasses." Crowley walked across the living room to where his friend sat. "Here. Let me set it up. Do you have a memory in mind?"

"Well…" Remembering its pleasantness made Aziraphale give in. "Just _five minutes_, Crowley."

"Okay, okay. Picture it vividly, and when you're ready I'll press go." The uncommon worrying part of Crowley flared for an instant considering it was his first actual beta test, but was soon eclipsed by his confidence in his own programming.

The angel did. He remembered picturesque hills, snowy caps in the distance, crisp air, a vibrant 19th century town square in – Norway, he believed. Arendal, was it? Or was it Arendelle? He tried not to think about what he did there – there was no need to relive that in detail – but the scenery was the most calming of all he'd seen.

"Rea –"

There was an ear-splitting, dizzying crack of electrons rearranging and dimensional plates shifting, and somehow, somewhere, a faint hiss. A pulsar-blue mass of light assaulted his eyes. With them shut, Aziraphale spent the next ten seconds imagining he was tunneling through time. It was surprisingly hot; it even felt somewhat like combustion. Smelt like it too. Something burning. Maybe leather.

On the eleventh second, he opened his eyes tentatively and found himself sitting in Crowley's chair, in Crowley's apartment, exactly where he'd been before. But Crowley had disappeared with the machine.

_Bugger, _he thought, realizing guiltily that the demon's swearing habits had rubbed off on him a bit too much.


	3. Chapter 3

_Fuuuuuck, fucking fucker, ahhhrgghh SHITFUCKaaahhhgh, god oh godbless it,_ thought Crowley.

Despite him being a demon, his human body still felt pain, which in small amounts he found rather enjoyable, so enjoyable that he'd turned off his automatic pain-numbing ability once and scarcely used it again. He now wished he hadn't, as this was not a small amount of pain. This was a dull full-body ache he was quite unaccustomed to. Judging from the excruciation that came with so much as a twitch, his left arm was probably broken. His forehead also felt the numb sting of a long-frozen-over gash. He shifted his head – his neck protested loudly – to look backwards and vaguely remembered crashing into the slab of rock behind him as he was unceremoniously ejected from the burning time-portal, some indefinite time ago.

It was also fucking cold.

He was sunken pathetically in what must've been three feet of snow. His leather jacket, which was singed at the edges from the commute (bless not beta-testing), was doing nothing to shield him from it. Where was he, even? What was Aziraphale even thinking? As much as he wanted to believe it, however, Crowley concluded it was unlikely that the angel had been thinking of a frozen wasteland in the middle of fuck. It was probably the programming that was at fault. Oh well, he deserved to take the hit for it. And it wasn't something a little debugging couldn't –

His heart sank sickeningly as his hand touched the frozen mass of what used to be the SuperTech.

He picked it up gingerly, careful not to completely shatter it. Its unprofessionally handled cracks and crevices had filled with melted snow and turned solid, cracking the screen down its center and rendering the whole thing pretty sadly nonfunctional. Crowley decided he didn't have the energy to worry about how he was going to get back. Worrying would expend too much heat. And he needed as much warmth as he could get because unlike most people, he was just a little bit cold-blooded.

He must have been here for a few hours at least; he was surprised but relieved that he hadn't died already. Hypothermia would've been hard to explain to his superiors. Any longer, however, and he was afraid he might lose a finger or nose. That would just be plain irking. Replacing individual parts was a long and unpleasant process. Crowley settled on two things he had to do for the rest of the day in order to survive.

Start a fire.

Find somewhere in this barren snowscape, preferably indoors, to crash for the night.

And next, lower on the priority list and which could probably wait until he had lodging and a good night's sleep:

Find out where I am, and when.

Think about how to get back.

Crowley sat up slowly, with as little pain as supernaturally possible, and took a quick glance around. It confirmed his suspicions that there was no foliage in sight. _Well, there goes the old-fashioned human fix,_ he thought. He could conjure a lighter, but with nothing to light its help would be insignificant. He thought about the last option. Admittedly, he was more than a little out of practice with conjuring fire, but he had no other choice at the moment.

He thought about heat, and all things hot: his living room heater, the burn of hard liquor, his brief visits to Hell, and driving his Bentley through the heart of the Odegra. Then he flicked his finger in the air and – nothing. _Fuck._ It had been years; he had to think harder, reach further into his subconscious. Weather on Warlock's birthday. Adrenaline rush during the shootout at the management firm, the escape from Hastur and Ligur, the time warp and his lovely, lovely jacket. Flick. Still freezing. Crowley sighed and gave in. He thought about sex: heated hookup sex with human mortals he'd had several times across history. It wasn't technically allowed, but he'd tried it initially out of curiosity. He'd gone back for the sheer excitement of it, but it wasn't much to make up for the fact that it was such an uncomfortably hot activity.

Flick. A little flame appeared in the air in front of him, morphed into a tiny orb and stayed there, hovering.

Crowley was not surprised. He'd found that certain beings watching his activities unfold had certain expectations. And he knew that to get a bigger fire, he had to give him what they wanted next. He sighed, closed his eyes and thought about how his cheeks flushed when Aziraphale looked at him with those blue eyes of his, how hot the angel looked in his khaki pants and tartan sweater, and how much he just wanted to – to –

A torrent of fire flew from Crowley's mouth into the air, joining the tiny orb of fire to become a significantly larger ball of fire. It crackled in the cold air, laughing at him. Crowley rolled his eyes. "Oh, of _course_," he grumbled at the sky. "Please don't make me do that again." He didn't want to convince himself about anything. Psychology was powerful like that.

The fire was just warm enough, and it thawed his skin and put mist on his miraculously unscathed sunglasses. Crowley smiled, and tried lifting a hand. The fireball vaguely followed it. _Huh, how incredibly convenient._ He thought briefly about trying to unfreeze the device before he headed off to find shelter, but figured it would probably just disintegrate. He buried it under the slab of rock and promised that if he needed to, he'd come back to it, but probably not.

In a few minutes, his joints felt ready to move again, and Crowley stood up, only to immediately sink. _Shame. It's pretty, definitely, but I have to walk, _he thought, as he effortlessly hurled a stream of flames into the snow to create a path in the direction he felt was the most snowy, since this was actually rather fun.

After half a day of walking and snow-melting, Crowley came across what appeared to be a flight of stairs stretching into infinity.

He wasn't sure if he was hallucinating. It was a possibility; supernatural beings did hallucinate, if it'd only happened to him once in the sixties. Perhaps he'd been walking for too long. Perhaps this was his Stairway to Heaven. Buggerit, all this effort just to die? Dying would be a copout at this point. He really hoped he wasn't dying, because the existence of sky-high stairs otherwise meant the existence of people (couldn't imagine what they were doing in this hole, but humans were strange), but if he really was going to die, he wondered if Led Zeppelin had a devil put aside for him.

He reached the foot of the stairs, ready for sudden death, then put his foot _on_ the stairs. It was definitely not a hallucination. He leaned down and examined it closely. It seemed to be made of firm ice, and looked beautiful and flawless, free of any traces of human error. Perhaps this _was_ a Supernatural occurrence. He appreciated its exquisiteness for a few more seconds, and began the long trek upwards.

Five minutes up, he began to feel impatient (oh my god I'm not even close to being at the top yet WHY ARE THERE SO MANY STAIRS?!) and despite his condition, began sprinting as best as he could up the stairs. It suddenly occurred to him as he was doing so that the staircase was, in fact, made of ice, and probably not the safest thing to walk, let alone run on. But it hadn't given him any problems thus far, and he was a demon, and demons didn't take precautions. He pushed on, and the more effort he exerted, the larger the fireball he was holding became.

About ten steps from the top, he slipped.

The fireball was promptly pulled by his weight and fell onto the step just in front of him. Crowley watched it cut clean through the ice, and the whole stretch of staircase he'd just climbed began to distance itself from his feet…

Without missing a beat, his good arm shot out and grabbed the edge of the step leading up, and Crowley thanked whoever his allegiance belonged to for his excellent reflexes. There was a spectacular cascade of crashes that sounded like a million falling chandeliers as the bits of ice-stairs hit the rocks below. Crowley had never heard such a breathtaking sound. He wondered, however, how long he could hang on before he joined those shattered fragments.

It turned out to be about five minutes. His arm was getting sore, and he didn't have enough strength to pull himself up using it, let alone enough energy to sprout wings and save himself. His mind was spinning with panic, alternate plans, and ultimately the fear of death. He wasn't just going to be annoyed at being dead anymore. He genuinely feared the fall.

But he heard and felt feet on the stairs, and felt a rush of relief. Then he heard a voice. Female, pleasant and slightly steely, probably late twenties. "Who goes there?" it asked, forcefully but cautiously.

"Guy with a broken arm who broke the stairs, Miss," said Crowley. "I've got three minutes tops. A hand?"

"I…" The voice was directly above him now, and he looked up to see a beautiful, hesitant face, framed by long silver hair.

"I'm sorry, sir," the woman finally said. "But let me go get my gloves."


	4. Chapter 4

The drop below the broken staircase was perilous and the sight of it sent chills through Elsa's body. Thankfully, the strange man wasn't very heavy for his size, so Elsa was able to pull him with a little effort over the edge onto what remained of her first architectural construction. She felt guilty; she should've realized the dangers of setting up a stairway made of ice, let alone having it span a hundred-feet drop. She'd figured no one besides her would be foolhardy enough to walk around in this weather. But of course there were people living on this mountain. Granted they would probably be wearing more clothes than this man, but still, she couldn't believe she'd been irresponsible enough to leave the staircase there just for her own vanity. She turned away and headed back up, frustrated at herself. _I could've killed someone…_

"Hey. Thanks. You saved my life."

She turned back to look at him. His eyes were hidden behind shaded glasses, but his mouth was upturned in a sheepish, grateful half-smile. (His thumb was upturned too, although she wasn't quite sure what that meant.) Elsa realized with a sudden feeling of accomplishment that he was right, she had saved him. After all her life of being quarantined or putting people in danger, she had finally done something meaningful for once. It made her feel alive.

"Don't worry about it," she said, returning the smile. "But let's get out of danger first."

They scaled the final steps and when they reached firm ground, the stranger promptly flopped onto the snow in exhaustion. Elsa looked at his left arm, and was badly tempted to conjure up an ice cast for it, but for the same reasons she had to grab her gloves when there was a man hanging on for his life, she couldn't risk it. She knew there were people searching for her, and there were questions she had to ask.

She helped the stranger to his feet – he seemed reluctant – and turned him to face her.

"Who are you with?"

The man looked around briefly. "Uh. As far as I know, no one. Unless you count. Then I'm with you."

This wasn't quite the answer Elsa wanted to hear. Even if he wasn't with a party, one could conceivably have followed him to her whereabouts. "Who sent you?" she continued.

He looked perplexed and mildly annoyed, like there was something he couldn't be bothered to talk about. "It's… kind of a long story. One I haven't figured out myself."

"Did Anna send you?" pressed Elsa.

"Anna? Who's Anna?"

Elsa eyed him closely. Most citizens of Arendelle knew the names of the royalty. And this man certainly didn't dress like he was from around here. It was the first time she had ever seen those dark glasses on anyone.

"Princess Anna of the kingdom of Arendelle," she said. "Does that ring a bell at all?"

"No, but you just told me where I am," said the man slickly. "Arendelle, was it? How do you spell that?"

She spelled it for him.

"Thanks. Well, that'd be more useful if I had anything to type it into. Hey, relax, you don't have to be all nervous," he said. "I'm just a lost traveler, nothing more, and if it's not too much trouble I'm looking for a place to – what in the hell is that?"

She saw his eyes widen in awestruck bewilderment and realized he was staring at the grandiose ice palace she had built, her crowning glory, her staunch symbol of liberation and defiance. She wondered how long she had to play up this charade. But while she was just about convinced that he hadn't been sent to kill her, the last thing she wanted him to think was that she was a monster…

"It's, uh, my house," she finally said, sheepishly. "I live there."

"It's… certainly quite a sight," said the stranger, clearly impressed but feigning nonchalance. Elsa secretly exulted. "Looks like a church. Although probably not as insufferable." He squinted through his glasses; she wondered why he wouldn't take them off. "I think I may have to take that back… is your house made of _ice_?"

"Yes."

"_Really_?" A skeptic, lightly sarcastic remark to which Elsa took a bit of surprised offense. "Out of all the materials you could've chosen to build a warm home on this _frozen wasteland_. You chose _ICE._" His tone was taking on an inquisitorial tinge, and Elsa swore he was trying to figure her out, which only made her want to deceive more.

"Don't question my – I mean my architect's decisions," she said flatly.

"Okay, then I won't." He moved past her abruptly swiftly and strode to the sparkling gate, where he tapped one knuckle on the door. _Clink._ "Just one last question. How long did this take to construct?"

"Uh…" How long did normal buildings take again? She had no idea. She was a queen, for god's sake. She ordered buildings to be made and it happened. Just like this one. "Twenty years," she said as confidently as she could. "It was a kingdom project – I wished for it one fine childhood birthday. Excuse me, sir, _what are you doing?_"

The man took his hand off the doorknob, and the gate creaked back into place. "Need to check if an ice palace isn't too cold for me to sleep in for the night."

"Excuse me, I did _not_ give you permission to lodge here," snapped Elsa, outraged. "I am a queen, and _I don't even know your name."_

"Oh, how terribly rude of me, Your Majesty," quipped the man, striding back to her in an unnatural blink of the eye. "The name's Crowley," he said, extending his right hand.

Elsa poised herself regally. "Elsa, Queen of Arendelle." She held out her own hand and took the shake.

In another unnatural fraction of an instant that she could not wrap her mind around, her right glove was suddenly not on her hand, but between Crowley's long fingers.

"Wha – Give me my glove back!" Despite the previous experience she was still much too caught off guard to say anything above the automatic.

Crowley stepped forward deliberately, tauntingly holding the glove out in front of her for a split second before closing his fist on it. "A man hanging on for his life, and your first thought is to _grab your gloves_," he hissed. "That's worthy grounds for my suspicion. Twenty years? Didn't take that long to build the Sistine Chapel."

"Let me warn you, sir, that the last time someone took my glove it didn't end so well," said Elsa steadily.

Crowley wasn't fazed in the slightest. "Whatever you did, make it worse."

It dawned on her belatedly that he was encouraging her – that for some reason, he _wanted_ to see her unleash her powers. And now the reason hardly mattered, because she was more than convinced that she wasn't going to let him get out of his dirty trick unscathed. He wasn't just going to see a beautiful display of snow-works. He was going to pay. With one sharp fling, an icy extension of her forearm shot out from her hand towards Crowley, glaciating his dark glasses and tearing them from his face. To Elsa's shock, this revealed a pair of lurid amber eyes, with black slits of pupils as narrow and vertical as a snake's.

The owner of the eyes, stunned momentarily, began nodding slowly with an air of increasing understanding and fascination. "That's… quite impressive," he muttered, half to himself. "I wasn't expecting that. I mean, I was, but then I wasn't." He raised his head and fixed his eyes directly on hers. Elsa felt a wave of raw and unparalleled discomfort rush through her.

"What are you?" she whispered.

"_What_ am I? Are you implying that I'm a, oh, I don't know,_ monster_?" retorted Crowley. Elsa felt a sting of guilt. "Relax. I'm just taking the piss," he cackled. "Fancy a duel?"

"A…duel?"

"You didn't think you were the only one with powers here, did you, Elsa? Tell you what. I'll answer your question, if you duel me."

Elsa hesitated. She didn't want to admit that she was scared. "But you're injured," she managed lamely, pointing at his left arm.

"Ah, you're right," mused Crowley. "In that case I'll just have to do it with one hand behind my back, literally." He snapped his fingers, and the broken arm was suddenly twisted in an unnatural, immutable angle behind his back. He shrugged. "Probably makes it a fair fight, to be honest."

Elsa gritted her teeth, and half-intentionally in her anger fired an ice beam of considerable strength at Crowley. Without missing a beat, he swiftly met and silenced the beam with an equally sizeable ball of flame hovering in the curve of his hand. As if absorbing energy from the blast, the ball surged upward in a stream of fire and Crowley brought it down like the burning sword of the Apocalypse, cutting through the freezing air, onto his opponent. She dodged the assault, just quickly enough to suffer the minor embarrassment of flames slicing off a protruding corner of her ice dress.

"Fire? What are you, the fire to my ice?" she chuckled, picking herself up, removing her other glove and raising her bare palms forcefully. A rapid, voluminous flurry of snow billowed from the ground, and, galvanized by adrenaline, she hurled it at her fellow conjurer at deadly speed.

"Good guess, but I do more than that," said Crowley, stopping the hurtling particles with one steely glare.

The sky turned black as storm clouds formed above the distant mountains, blanketing out the sun as they aggregated. Elsa noticed that Crowley's teeth were clenched and his eyes had turned from yellow to a fiercely glowing red. A gust of supernatural strength knocked her off her feet back into the now thinning snow, as trees snapped and debris collapsed all around her. For once faced with immediate, pressing danger, Elsa felt hysteria seep into her being. She felt it rise up into her heart, and then explode in a fit of carnal panic and rage. The elements responded accordingly. Snow and ice burst from the sky and a freezing vortex of wind whirled around them, forming a relentless natural arena. Elsa realized hearteningly that her blizzard was more than a match for Crowley's hurricane. Riding the momentum, she blasted the ground deftly to form spikes of ice, broke off the sharpest, deadliest-looking one, and held it before her like a sword. "Let's spar," she yelled over the storm.

Crowley grinned and plucked off his own icicle. "Queen's rules," he said.

Elsa let out a scream and swung savagely at him. But what she had in passion and barbarity she lacked in balance and control, which showed as Crowley skillfully deflected each of her strikes. She darted around as dexterously as anyone trained by royal fencers could, but every swing, every attempt was thwarted by his superior discipline. With each deflection Elsa grew more and more agitated, and the blizzard brewed more and more violently around them. As she continued sparring, she tried to harness the intensifying storm and launch subverted ice attacks at Crowley to undermine his concentration, but she began to see that any frost that fell on or assaulted his body simply slid off and fell away.

Just when she thought she'd succeeded at halting him, a few steps away from her, by trapping his feet in thickening snow, Crowley struck her ice sword out of her hands with one deafening swing, and pointed the end of his directly at her neck. Elsa's heart sank as she realized her defeat. But to her surprise, instead of gloating Crowley was fixating his eyes on hers once more. This time, she could feel them burning through her skull.

"Elsa, focus," he hissed. "You're holding back. Concentrate your energy. And don't rely on superficial rage. Dig deep. _Focus._"

For a moment, she swore she'd stopped breathing.

Then she closed her eyes and focused. In a few milliseconds she barreled through the darkest parts of herself. The memories – the tragedies, deaths, accidents, misunderstandings; and the emotions – loneliness, indignation, frustration, self-hate, jealousy, guilt. All of a sudden, she found herself tapping into a pool of power she was not familiar with. It didn't feel like anything she'd felt or knew she had before, but it felt powerful, and dark, and it felt _evil._ And there was one thing she knew for sure, and it was that she didn't want it in there; she wanted it _out._ And so with superhuman force of will she shot it upwards, and it burst through the thin fabric of her being, through all the dark and light parts of her, until it emerged as a disembodied, hellish shriek and a thousand million shards of ice.

When she opened her eyes slowly, she saw Crowley completely immobilized by a dense cage of deadly spikes, all pointing towards him, such that if he so much moved by an inch in any way he would be stabbed in some vital part of his body.

"Congratulations," he said, trying not to smile in order to avoid impaling his cheekbones. "You won."

Elsa stared. The storm was dying down. She kicked the ground in frustration and disappointment. "You let me win," she said quietly.

"No I didn't. This is all you," insisted Crowley. "This is some dangerous shit. If I move even half an inch I'll probably get stabbed somewhere and bleed to death."

Elsa didn't respond. She turned away.

"Look, I'm sorry," he continued. "I know you wanted to win this by yourself. But all I did was encourage you. You couldn't have done this if you yourself didn't have the talent. And I knew you had it in you. I can sense things, and sense how people are feeling. In your case I could sense your power, and that it was raw and uncut, but it needed more training, more control. Not control as in suppression, which I can tell you've been doing, but execution. Your powers are concentrated, but strong. Mine are varied but a bit all over the place. I feel like we've quite a lot to learn from each other. And it'd be a waste if we didn't. So come on, come back, and I'll give you back your glove, and you give me my sunglasses _and_ the OK to get rid of all this so I can stop living in fear of puncture wounds."

Despite herself and her slightly bruised pride, Elsa couldn't help but smile. She turned back and looked at Crowley, and saw a seamless mix between a strong, mysterious being with formidable powers and a goofy dude pathetically trapped in ice. She laughed and nodded. "Yes, you may stop living in fear of puncture wounds," she said. Crowley sighed in relief, and with an extremely careful snap of his fingers, the spikes receded into the ground.

Elsa looked around uncomfortably; Crowley's prized accessory was nowhere in sight. "Uh, bad news. I think I lost your glasses."

"Oh, that's not a problem," he replied as a pair of dark glasses materialized out of his eyes. "Second one this week," he sighed offhandedly. "And while we're at it…" A new pair of gloves appeared immaculately on Elsa's hands.

"Oh! Wow, uh – thank you. And – thank you… for the kind words." The true depth of that earlier utterance was starting to get to her a bit. "Oh, and – thank you for the offer. But…" She watched Crowley's face fall momentarily. She grinned mischievously, carefully removed her gloves, and handed them to him. "But you can hold on to these until we spar again."

His face lit up, then quickly returned to suave nonchalance. She had a feeling he hadn't intended to be so transparent. "It'll be my pleasure," he replied, taking the gloves and then reaching out for a solid, legitimate, no-trickery handshake. Elsa took it, and for the first time in forever felt the warmth of human contact in her palm.

"Alright, so now I'm curious. What did happen the last time someone stole your glove?" asked Crowley.

Elsa smiled. "Over dinner?"

"Don't see why not."


End file.
